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If there is one man who must not know whether to laugh or cry over Chelsea’s impressive start to the season, it is Andre Villas-Boas. Naturally, former Blues boss Villas-Boas already has many reasons to feel bitter towards his former employers after he was fired in March after just eight months in the job.

He could barely disguise his resentment when he became Tottenham manager in the summer and he surely cannot wait to prove a point when Chelsea visit White Hart Lane in 17 days’ time.

Of course, the Blues have hardly been struggling in the 34-year-old’s absence — after all, his replacement, Roberto di Matteo, did win the Champions League and FA Cup in May.

Di Matteo is also earning all the plaudits for Chelsea’s style of play this season which has taken them to the top of the Premier League and now, after a 4-0 win over FC Nordsjaelland last night, into first place in their Champions League qualifying group as well.

The thing is, the Italian is using the exact same blueprint for success as Villas-Boas envisaged when he arrived at Stamford Bridge full of ideas and great enthusiasm from Porto last year.

He wanted a team full of young attacking players to entertain, while playing a pressing game high up the pitch in a similar way to the Spanish national team or Barcelona.

Unfortunately, Villas-Boas didn’t have the personnel to make it work because he was unable to get in all the players he wanted in his first transfer window and the experiment was abandoned six months ago after results went awry.

Di Matteo’s reward for winning the Champions League was receiving the financial backing to buy the talent to complete Villas-Boas’s grand masterplan, with Eden Hazard, Marko Marin, Oscar and Victor Moses all arriving this summer.

Anyone who witnessed Chelsea’s victory at Arsenal on Saturday could testify just how well it was working but there was another clear reminder against the Danish champions. Chelsea opened the scoring in the first half with a goal straight out of their former boss’s playbook. Fernando Torres robbed Enoch Adu of possession before laying it off to Frank Lampard, who passed it to Juan Mata to score. It was fast, ruthless and effective.

It should be pointed out that all three players were at the club when the method was first tried out last year but now they are carrying out their instructions with far more conviction and were clearly helped by the pressure that youngsters Oscar and Moses also provided in the Parken Stadium.

Significantly, the players are aware themselves of just how well they are now using the tactic. Goalkeeper Petr Cech explained to Standard Sport: “Last year we weren’t very successful when we tried the pressing game but this season it has all seemed to click for us.

“We have different players in the team now who might be helping but certainly having more time to work on it has helped make a difference. If you do something for a year then you become better at it. In the first half against Nordsjaelland we had moments where we pressed very well, like for the first goal, but we also had times where we did it very badly. That’s why they managed to control most of the game in the first half and escaped from the back. But we got better in the second half and made it really difficult for them.”

As Cech implies, the players see plenty of room for improvement, a sentiment Lampard clearly agrees with. The midfielder said: “For the first goal we won it high up the pitch with good pressing. When you can nick the ball like we did then you have to try and be clinical. On that occasion we were but there were other occasions where we could have done more.”

Chelsea certainly did not control the game as well as they would have liked after going ahead and they had Cech to thank for keeping them ahead. The Czech Republic international did brilliantly to tip Joshua John’s curling effort on to the post in the second half to prevent the hosts from equalising.

A sublime David Luiz free-kick, as well as further strikes from Mata and Ramires, all in the last 11 minutes, ensured the scoreline flattered the visitors.

But even though Chelsea were playing unglamorous opposition, the chance of winning just their second away match in eight Champions League games still proved a cause for celebration.

Lampard said: “It was very important for us to win this, considering that we drew our first game in the group against Juventus, who are a very strong team.

“What happened to us in the competition last year shows how tough it is to win away from home. We didn’t win away in the group stages last season, although we still went on to win the competition.

“We played Genk last year and drew 1-1, a team not so fancied in the big picture like Nordsjaelland but they can be tough games.